Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello everybody, this is Scott Bradley coming to you from www.scottbradley.name and this
video is probably going to be one of the best in this four part Evernote Scott video series that
I'm going to do on this YouTube channel. The reason that it is so awesome and important that
you watch all of these videos is because I'm going to give you something that's going to help
you manage your entire life in Evernote to the point where it literally clear your mind. Allow
your mind to totally focus but also make it so easy to just manage all those every little detail
things in your life going forward to the point where you're going to be so productive and
effective that you're going to just be so thankful that I shared this with you.
So, before we get started I just want to go over one quick little detailed change that Evernote
has made in the Evernote notes before we jump into the thing that I'm going to show you today.
And just to let you know this is the first video in a four part video series and you'll see why it's
going to be four parts versus one video with everything in it because of the amount of content
that I'm going to be sharing with you.
So the first thing that I want to go over first is the quick little change. So as you guys all know
in Evernote, there's the notebooks on the left, the notes and then the content in the notes and
the note in the notebook. So I just wanted to show you, when you create a new note it
automatically has changed, if you notice, the format has changed. There's no little pencil
anywhere anymore. Literally Evernote has made it so easy now for us to be in the web based
version of this app to just click in, type text, click this, type text, be done, click off and it's
saved. So there's no more clicking the little pencil, no more clicking 'done' or anything. So I
just wanted to show you that quick little thing before we jumped in to the main content today.
So, as I said at the beginning of this video, I'm going to give you that platform and that thing to
actually help you manage your day to day life. If you're a really hardcore Evernote user, like
I'm sure you are, if you're watching these videos up to now or even if you're just getting
started watching these videos. You most likely have it on your phone, you use it on your
computer, you've probably downloaded the application on your desktop. And after you see the
start of these videos, I think you're going to get really excited about the potential of how this
can truly streamline your entire life and the way that you get stuff done, be more productive
and just have that peace of mind knowing that everything is handled,
everything is taken care of.
So here is what it is, this huge build up. The notebook that I'm going to show you today that I
have been using for as long as I can remember when I started using Evernote and seeing the
potential of it. I like to call this notebook, 'Today + Year', so it's titled, 'Today' the plus sign
'Year'. And in this notebook you're going to see all of these notes and in a sense all of these
notes basically each have a purpose in this notebook. And they each basically allocate time in a
way where each note is used in a specific way depending on what you're focused on or what
you're doing in the moment to get stuff done.
So I'm going to go over, as you can see here, I don't know if you can see that but there's 17
total notes in this notebook and each note has its own individual purpose. So when you first
create this notebook, and if you do want to follow along and press 'pause' and go and create it
and come back. The first think you want to do is create your notebook and as you know it's
click this little arrow up here, press 'new notebook', it's going to pop up, just put "Today +
Year", 'save' and it should show up there in the left hand corner. And then the next step is to
create 17 new notes so you can populate this first before you start filling in your content.
So today I'm going to go over the very first five notes and these are the most important notes I
feel like in the actual framework of what's being done. So let's just get started. The five notes
that you first need to start off with are the Daily Execution note, the Waiting On note, the
Future Opportunities note, the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly note and the Holding
Tank. Now I'm going to go over each individual note but I'm going to start with the Daily
Execution note.
Basically what the Daily Execution note is is it's your daily to do list. So if you have little
pieces of paper everywhere, if you have a notepad that you normally write to do lists on and
you just keep pushing the list over, pushing the list over, pushing the list over. Crossing it off,
moving to the next thing, rewriting the list. You're not going ever have to do that anymore
whatsoever because this Daily Execution note is basically the dashboard for your entire day and
your future days as you continue to work. Because no more will you have to do continually
write out a list, cross things off, look at the list the next day and move old items to the new
items because this is there for you 100%.
So typically what I like to do is I like to break up this Daily Execution note into two specific
things. I have my appointments for today as well as my tasks for today. Now typically what I
like to do is I like to first as the day starts, I look at my calendar and I say, "Okay, what
appointments do I have today?" and when I figure that out I come back to this Daily Execution
note and look at, "Okay, appointment, appointment, appointment done". Great.
Then, as far as get done for today, I look at all of the places in my life where I put reminders or
whatever or even in your phone or you can put them here if you use Evernote. I put all of these
items here so this would be, write blog post for XYZ website, call back client at this time for
this specific thing. So this is going to be different for everybody, obviously I'm making these
videos as general and frame worked as possible and then as I jump into the, I do have
something interesting to tell you at the end of this video that's going to definitely add a lot
more value to you guys than what I'm doing right now. But that's beside the point.
Getting back to the note here, this getting tasks done today is your to do list, if you will. Now,
remember, if you've watched previous videos, you're going to get this. If you haven't, I highly
recommend that you go back into the channel. All that you have to do is on the bottom left
hand corner, type the word, 'Evernote Scott' next to my picture, press the videos at the top and
go click and watch the "How to Use Evernote to Achieve Your Goals". And it's going to
basically give you the breakdown of what I'm going to go over right now. So the reminder that
I want to give you is, your daily task flow to this note from your daily reminders note in your
daily fill notebook. So if I went too fast, I'm going to explain that here.
As you know in the previous video on how to achieve your goals in the daily fill notebook,
there is the note here that is the daily reminders. So you have your quarterly focus, your
continual actions, your one time actions, your mindset, your other reminders. So I always like
to look at my daily reminders note and sometimes that triggers tasks to bring them back to the
Daily Execution note and pop them there.
So between the very first thing that I do in the morning is go through my daily fill. Again, you
want to make sure you go back to that video on how to achieve your goals using Evernote. You
go through this and then it's like today and years is front and center after that point. So that's
how to use the Daily Execution note. As you can see it's going to remove any and all paper
based to do lists because we have Evernote on our phone,
we can always be editing it, it's amazing.
Next thing, next note is called the waiting on note. I don't know if you're like me but I hate, I
hate, hate, hate when things fall through the cracks. Everything from sending an email to John
or something that I was expecting to hear from but I never heard back and because I didn't hear
back the project fell through. And I'm sure we all have those situations in our life where we
call Sally and we say, "I need this, I need that", you sometimes forget, you don't get it and then
the project blows up in your face. So what I like to do is my waiting on note is basically
keeping track of all of the things that are in limbo with an open loop that aren't complete.
So I have certain categories. The main is a general waiting on item. This would be, sent email
to XYZ person, need to hear back about this by this date. Another one could be, called John,
asked him for this, need it by X date. Next thing would be a project or client thing. So say
you're a consultant and you're working on a website for a client and you need specific, whether
it's copy or you need designs or wire frames. That would fit into the project client waiting on.
Next thing is payment waiting on. Say that you've issued invoices to people and you want to
keep track of what invoices you've sent and what are paid, what aren't paid. I know sometimes
people have it in their own accounting software, other times they don't. So, again, as you
know, I'm just frame working this out of what's possible here. And you can create as many
different contexts around waiting on as you want. I'm just, again, showing you some of things
that I've used.
And then, finally, future work requests waiting on. Say that this would be, you would talk to
your friend John and John said, "Hey, I may have a project coming down the pike for you, in a
month or two around this focus", that's where this would go. So, future work requests,
payments waiting on, a project based client. We all know that we may be having more than one
client that we're working with so we'll have multiple clients. So we'll have, Johnny Jones,
Sally Sue, Derrick Whatever, would be the projects scaling up. It scales to the point where you
need it to keep track of all the stuff that's in limbo. And what's really great about this note and
what I found is that as I continually manage my waiting on items in my Evernote, it doesn't
keep me in this stress mode of, "Oh my god, my mind has to keep track of all this stuff that's in
the loop", I don't have to think about it anymore because all of my pending or non-closed loop
items are right here. And part of my Daily Execution that I do is and actually, it's actually my
daily fill, sorry about that. One of my daily morning rituals is to look at all of my waiting on
items, so I didn't put it here but I'm just going put here, "Look at waiting on item in today +
year". And, basically, what I do is, it's one of this little daily morning ritual thing is to look at
this note and say, "Okay, what's waiting on that I need to follow up with now?" or "What
waiting on items do I need to add to my Daily Execution to follow up with that person today?".
So, yes, it's micromanaging it but the fact of the matter is, it's thorough, everything gets done
and you're not in this space of my mind is cluttered with all this noise and stuff that's taking
you away from being focused on your work. So that's really, really a big, big note. These two
are massively active throughout every single day of my life.
Next thing, future opportunities, similar to the waiting on of future work request waiting on,
future opportunities. Let's say that you're sitting down and you're thinking about certain
things in your business or what it is that you do and you think, "Oh, there's an opportunity at
this place or at this place. Or this person, I didn't even think about approaching them". This
allows you to manage all those forward, proactive, action oriented things in your business, in
your life, in your work, in your job, whatever. So it could be new clients to land, new
partnerships to make and even 'other' could be you've spoken to someone in the past and
you've talked about possibly doing some work together but you never closed that loop or
followed it up. I know I've had certain instances as a consultant that I am where I have
conversations with people and it ends up in where, "Okay, well we'll stay in touch", well I just
put them, John Jones, possible work on XYZ thing with their company", whatever.
So, again, very similar to waiting on, where I spent my daily fill to go through my waiting on, I
also look at my future opportunities every day because am I able to make the time in order to
pursue these possible leads or possible conversations that I've had in the past? Obviously
that's going to make you more money as well as be more effective in your everyday life and
your business and anything that you're really focusing on. So that's very powerful.
The next note is called, 'The Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly'. And I know that's a
whole mouthful to take in but when you see this it's going to be very, very, "Oh my god, this is
awesome". As you can tell, I love Evernote and I love just productivity, life output, all of it. I
eat, sleep, breathe, drink this stuff because I'm always looking to say, "How can I be more
effective in what I'm doing in order to get a better result in my life?".
One of the biggest things that I've taken away from life and very similarly to talk about the
Daily Fill and the reminders and the rituals. Again, these notebooks are very connected
together which is why, if you've noticed in previous videos up to this point, I've kept it here
because I knew that I was going to make this series of videos that would have the integration of
what I'm talking about today and everything's building on top of another for you and you're
seeing how it's all connected.
So the 'Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly', this is basically, again, part of your
dashboard of your Daily Execution. So you would basically say, "Okay, daily, weekly,
monthly, yearly. What tasks am I in? Am I beginning of the month? Am I the end of the
month? Am I at the end of the quarter? End of the entire month of December and first of the
year?" Again, I'm going to go more in detail into what those are and then you can basically
take these items, copy them, paste them to your Daily Execution into your get done today.
So look at this, I've learned that success is real byproduct of what you do on an everyday basis
and certain things that you do every day are continually contributing to the achievement of the
goals and dreams and things that you've set for yourself. So very similarly going back to the
Daily Fill where one of these things is Goals for 2013 as well as Goals Three to Five Years
from Now. What I like to do is I look to look at my goals and say, "Okay, what are those staple,
everyday," again going back here, "Staple, everyday activities that I want to make sure that I do
throughout the week? What are the activities that I want to do at the beginning of the month?
What are the activities that I want to at the end of the month? The end of the quarter? The end
of the year? The end of month of the end of the year? And at the first of the year that are in
alignment with creating the result that I want for the goal that I want to achieve?"
So I'll give you an example. Let's say that my goal, one of my goals for 2013 is drive 100,000
unique visitors per month through one of my websites. And I have to step back and look at this
and say, "What specific actions do I need to do, either on a daily basis? On an every other day
basis? At the first of the month? At the end of the month, in order to help me create that
result?" And what I do is I put there here. So if every Monday I'm going to focus on writing a
blog post. Every Tuesday I'm going to focus on driving traffic through the blog post that I
wrote on Monday and then every Thursday I'm going to focus on looking at another space to
drive traffic through that blog post that I did and already leveraged on Tuesday.
That would be an example.
Again, this is not truly customized, I'm just showing you the way I'm thinking about it so you
can take it and run with it. So as you notice here, another interesting new feature that Evernote
launched is the ability to put a table in your note and I want to show you how to do that really
quick before I move to the final note in this video, the Holding Tank.
So it's very simple to do this. What you need to do is at the very top here there's this little
thing that looks like a little grid icon and it says, "Insert Table". So you click it and you
basically say, "Okay, how many rows do I want? How many columns do I want" So, again,
let's just say we want one row and we want three columns and we want it to be, and if you see
here, it's percent of page or pixels, so we can choose one. I always like to percent of page, let's
just say make it 95% of the page, add. Boom. So then it pops it in there and you type text in
here and it automatically changes size for you. It's very cool how you can manage this now
with Evernote doing this for you and the possibilities of how you want to do this and use this
are completely endless.
So, again, let's just delete this, you don't want to delete everything here. Delete. Delete.
Delete and then click here, delete. So, very easy to manage. Very easy to use as you can see
here. Again, this goes back to, "Okay, my Monday tasks are this, I need to add them to my
Daily Executions". The way I work with my day is I look at what are the things driving my
daily activity based on the goals that I have that I've already determine in my Daily Fill here.
And then I basically have this item, this note throughout my entire day driving the activity that
I do so I can a) stay on task, b) get more done and, in using the Waiting on Notes, the Future
Opportunity notes and the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly notes, it really allows
you to literally be in total action mode without having to continually keep managing all the
stuff in the back of your mind. Looking at the first, second, third of the month, these can be the
tasks, again, associated with your goals that would be tied to the achievement of something that
you're going after.
So for me, one of the first of the month tasks is to look at my website analytics and say, "What
did I learn from the previous month and what actions or things do I need to tweak in what I'm
doing in order to be more effective?" At the end of the month, typically, that's where I pay all
of my bills, that's where I take in all the stuff that I've been doing in that month and saying,
"What am doing? What I am learning? What are the mistakes that I've made?
How can I improve, etc.?"
If you're a company, you also want to look on a quarterly basis. What are the things that you
want to do at the end of the quarter? And what is it that you want to learn so you can more
effective the next quarter? That's another big thing. Entire month of December, I don't know
about you, but for me aside from planning my years based on my birthday, which is November
23rd every year, I look also at the end of the year and say, "Okay, what did I do this year? What
did I learn this year? How much money did I make? How did I make that money? What have I
learned from that point?" Again, you want to put these tasks here. They're going to be
customized to you but, again, I'm just giving you the framework.
What are the final two weeks of December look like for you? Obviously, we have the craziness
of the holidays and we have New Year's coming up. What are those items that you want to
focus on? And then, finally, the first of the year. What does that first week or first two weeks
of the year look like for you so you can get a great start to the year, start the effective train,
push it out of the station. What does that look like for? Again, if you notice, all of this
planning and structure and framework for your life, it's helping you be clear and be more
present in the moment as you're working rather than managing all of the crap in your mind of,
"Oh my god, did I email that person? Did that person get back to me? Did I do that task? Is the
sticky note on my desk over at my home with this item, is that done?" It eliminates it
completely which is really the goal of what I focus on using Evernote for in the big scope of
this. So I'm very excited about sharing this with you.
Now, finally, in this first of four part movie, in this video, the final note that I want to share
with you today is called the 'Holding Tank'. Now if you see up here, the Holding Tank equals
things I want to get done but don't have to do right now, so it doesn't have a deadline. Now
before I go through this real quick, I want to just share one thing and one tip that I would do. I
would take this Daily Execution doc and I would drag it over to shortcuts. So every single day
you can say, "Okay, what's my Daily Execution?" click here, boom, it pops it, it's all right
there. Just wanted to show you that real quick and what I would recommend that you do.
So now, Holding Tank, again, things I want to get done but don't have to do right now. So as
you know and throughout our everyday life we are bombarded with certain things that we want
to do, we want to go through, we want to read, we want to watch but at the moment that we're
given that specific piece of information, we don't have the time because we're so focused on
what we're working. So what I like to call the Holding Tank is in sense, in context that I'm
going to go through real quick, is that stuff that I want to get done but, again, I don't have to do
right now because there's no deadline. So the categories that I've created for you to think from
your perspective is what is it that you want to consume? Do you have videos that you want to
consume? Reports that you want to consume that you've downloaded online? Videos you want
to watch? Emails to go through that friends have sent you. What are those things? Put them
here. What is it that you want to finish, what's pending? What specific thing have you started
but you didn't finish? Put those items there.
What are some of the things that you want to do but not right now? I don't know about you but
for me I get into the shower and I just start, my mind starts rolling and rolling and rolling and
sometimes I get things that I want to do but I just don't want to do them right now because I
don't want to add another thing to my plate. Put them here. Do but not right now.
Other ideas to execute, again, this is similar to do but not right now but it may be the context of
the idea may be different. Again, you're just going to have to play around with works with you
and what makes sense to you. Again, I'm just giving you ideas here.
New stuff I want to read/go through. This could be content that you've purchased in the past
that you haven't spent time to go through. It could be books that you've bought that you
haven't wanted to go through. Again, it's very similar to consume but you may want to be a
little bit more specific here.
And finally, unfished back burner tasks. Again, the unfinished stuff that you want to get done
but, again, it's not urgent that you get it done today or tomorrow or in a week. And you
reference this note when you are in this funk of, "What should I focus on next? Where do I
want to go with this and where do I want to go with my life here?" This is a great to come to
and this gives you this dumping ground space of, "Oh, I saw that TV program or I was watching
Shark Tank", which, by the way, is one of my favorite shows. "I was watching Shark Tank and
I saw this thing. Wow, I need to go and do some research on that product or just that industry
in general because there may be some opportunities that I can take advantage in that space."
Again, we as humans, we are in constant state of receiving, receiving, receiving, receiving and
what we receive creates inspiration and sometimes that inspiration to go after something, the
timing is not right. So, again, this Holding Tank gives you that
opportunity to dump all of that stuff here.
So, that's the first of four videos in here. Now I have two quick things that I want to tell before
we go on and you can watch the next video and I don't think I'm going to publish these both at
the same at the time. But you're going to definitely be able to get access to these if you watch
this later or two weeks or three weeks later. But I'm just assuming right now you're going to
watch this and you're going to want the next one as fast as possible so I'll do the best that I can
to get it out.
The two things I want to share with. The very first thing is that in a previous video I asked you
guys to send me an email about what industry you're in and really give me the opportunity to
create a custom Evernote set up for you. So if you are interested in that, I will be jumping into
that here very soon. So what you need to do is send me an email to evernotescott@gmail.com,
evernotescott@gmail.com and I want you to put the subject line as, 'how would you...?', 'how
would you...?' is going to be the subject line. And in that email what I want you to do is say,
"Hey Scott, I'm in this industry or I'm in this job or I'm in this role and I really want to use
Evernote to be more effective in what I'm doing. How would you set up an Evernote given my
current scenario and what I'm doing and what I'm working on?"
Again, one of the most enjoyable things that I love doing is creating content in this space for
those individual types of people. These Evernote videos that I've done up to now, it's been a
great framework for you to run with but I know where the value is going to truly be added even
on a greater scale is me going into, "Okay, XYZ person is an attorney, how would I set it up if I
were an attorney knowing what I know?" or, if someone's in the PR world, how would I set up
if someone's doing PR? Again, each Evernote set up for each individual person in different
industries is going to be different. So I want to really add some massive value to you guys so if
are interested in that, again, please send your email to evernotescott@gmail.com, subject line,
'how would you...?' fill in the content, "Hey Scott, I'm in XYZ industry. Here's what I do.
Please let me know if there's any way that I can be more effective."
I have had students send me things saying, "Hey, I'm a student, how do I use Evernote to
organize my stuff for notes in class?" That's going to be a great video that you guys are going
to learn from. So that's the first thing.
And, second thing, a final reminder, if you've watched the previous videos you know I've
talked about this in the past but if you want to be notified immediately, every single time when
I publish a new Evernote Scott video, I highly recommend you go and you sign up for the email
list. Go to scottbradley.name/evernotetips and in here you're going to put your first name and
your email and you're going to press 'go'. And what's going to happen is you're going to get
an email asking to confirm your subscription and the reason I did that is because I don't want to
violate any canned spam rules and all that stuff. So all you've got to do is click that button in
that email and you're going to be good to go. And every single time that I make a new video,
you're going to be notified immediately. And the reason I decided to set this system up is
because you can never rely on YouTube. Sometimes they send it, sometimes they don't' and I
want to make sure that you get the most out of the videos that I'm providing and I want to make
sure you always get them so I don't have to rely on YouTube.
And I just want to let you know, I'm not going to sell your information to anybody, your info is
safe with me. So you're only going to be getting stuff with me about new videos and new
content. So I really hope that you love this video. Again, for a quick review, your Daily
Execution is almost like your daily to do list, your Waiting On basically goes over what are the
open loops that aren't closed yet, again, in the different context. Your Future Opportunities,
what are the things that you want to go after or what are the conversations that you've had with
people that you want to keep track of for future reference? And, again your Waiting On and
your Future Opportunities also drive your Daily Execution here. What are the daily, weekly,
monthly, quarterly, yearly things that you want to make sure that you always do that is in
alignment with the goals that you want to go and get and achieve? And, finally, what are the
things that you want to get done but don't have to do right now? What are the things that see,
you come across, etc. that you want to do but you just don't want to do right now? I know I
sound like a broken record but that's what it means.
So I really hope that you enjoyed this video. I absolutely love the videos and feedback that I'm
getting and I just want to thank you so much for your time and attention and be on the look out
for the next video. I'm going to go over the next four notes in that video. So stay tuned, stay
plugged in, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of the week. Have a good one. Bye.
Captions by GetTranscribed.com